Juried exhibitions are opportunities for both emerging and established artists to show their work, both to the public and to jurors, who are frequently people who hold leadership positions in the arts. Acceptance into these shows, an achievement in its own right, can also yield further opportunities and connections for artists.
Two such exhibitions, the “Juried Regional Exhibition” at the Newport Library Arts Center and “As We Tilt Toward the Sun,” at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, both on view now, each offer viewers a look at a huge array of work by artists in and around the Upper Valley. The chosen work ranges from representational scenes of nature to more conceptual exercises in color and form. The experience levels of the artists vary from beginner to professional, with equal space given regardless of an artist’s resume.
At the Library Art Center, jurors Betsy Derrick, a professional artist, and Jessica Gelter, executive director of Monadnock Arts Alive, in Keene, N.H., have selected works from 40 artists to fill the nonprofit arts center’s restored former carriage house attached to the Richards Free Library.
From those, the jurors chose seven artists for next year’s “Selections” show, which allows them to present a wider range of new work.
It’s a feature of juried shows that the work on view ranges across genre and style. My View from the Window, by Newport artist Cynthia Daniels, is a classic Upper Valley tableau with impastoed birch trees flanking a distant mountain overlooking a vast, verdant valley. As a nice counterpoint, Coastal City, by New London artist Alan Shulman, is a modernist interpretation of a cityscape complete with lively geometric forms that seems to dance across the canvas. Large orbs hover in the background like moons, and rocket ships whiz around, suggesting an interplanetary world in some distant future.
At AVA Gallery, “As We Tilt Toward the Sun,” which comprises works by 46 artists, is organized “around themes of solstice, time, process, change, and new beginnings,” according to juror Janie Cohen, director of the Fleming Museum of Art at the University of Vermont. In her juror’s statement, Cohen writes, “The past few years have brought deeply felt changes: both by necessity and by choice, and with those changes, many endings and new beginnings.”
To reflect this theme, the works in the show demonstrate the passage of time whether in the depiction of light at specific moments in the day, as in Thetford artist’s Anne Cogbill Rose’s Shine with Sol – slogan of Sol beer which shows a beer bottle in close-up bathed in the unmistakable light of the beach at 5 p.m.
Other works allude to the passage of time in more metaphorical ways. Katie Poore, of Bradford, Vt., uses pressed flowers, found insect wings and plant parts in her geometric abstractions. In Lunar Provision these materials are arranged in a delicate formal composition crowned by a golden crescent moon that alludes to lunar cycles and the stages of growth and entropy that are inevitable in nature. As Cohen notes, “Both nature and art can help us remember that we will always tilt toward the sun again, we will always have the opportunity for new beginnings, whether in the studio or in our lives.”
As with art exhibitions generally in the Upper Valley, both exhibitions are free and open to the public. These shows present excellent opportunities to see what Upper Valley artists have been working on.
The “Juried Regional Exhibition” is on view through Aug. 26 at the Library Arts Center in Newport. For more information, go to libraryartscenter.org. “As We Tilt Toward the Sun” is on view through July 9 at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon. For more information go to avagallery.org.